8 tips to improve your self-esteem and be less sensitive

1. Don’t rely on substances to make you feel confident.  Alcohol and drugs ultimately drag down your mood and increase negative feelings about yourself.  
   
2. Make it a conscious practice to take care of yourself every day. Ask yourself every morning ‘what am I going to do to care for me today?’ Make healthy food choices, get quality sleep and get some exercise. 
   
3. Increase your awareness of the triggers that lower your self-esteem.  Are you very sensitive to criticism? If somebody criticises something you’ve done, do you translate that to mean something negative about you? This can often lead to self-defeating behaviour.  Instead of taking criticism to heart, ask yourself instead what it teaches you. It may teach you something about yourself or about the person doing the criticising.  It may lead to you becoming more proficient at the task. Use it as an opportunity.  Remember criticism only has the meaning that you apply to it, negative beliefs generate negative meanings. Are you sensitive because you’re externalising your self-worth? Attaching it to a project, job, possessions or your appearance? If this is the case, this is something you need to work on.  Self-worth begins and ends within, it's how you feel about yourself.  If you are struggling with this, this is an area where therapy will be of help to you.
   
4.  Be mindful of your automatic thoughts. Think about how you personalise things and slow down your impulsive responses. You can pause these automatic overreactions by using relaxation and stress management techniques such as deep diaphragm breathing.  By so doing you can interrupt your old automatic reaction, and instead of flying off the handle consider instead what are the unacknowledged fears at the root of the reaction.  Notice if you tend to overreact in the same way to the same type of incident, this will help you to anticipate it and slow down.  Ask yourself why do you feel such a strong response, you will realise the response is not proportionate  to the current circumstance at all, but rather relates to an already existing belief that you have about yourself.  You can identify and amend that belief; it’s not set in stone. If you find it difficult to pinpoint the belief and it’s source, this is an area where Hypnotherapy can really achieve dramatic results.
5. Talk yourself through your reaction; get it out in the open. Actually say “I’m doing it again and then specify what you are doing, feeling and thinking.  “There goes that old response”.  Slow things down and give yourself the opportunity to consider your response more carefully.
   
6.  Learn to recognise self-defeating habits.  Swap them for self-care when you do.  For example if you feel that impulse to have a drink to quell some unsettling emotions, opt instead to do some mindful breathing and positive affirmations and allow yourself to feel the feelings gently.  Learning to experience these feelings will mean you no longer have to commit so much energy to suppressing them. You’ll be amazed at how much energy and headspace this will free up.
7. Understand that all behaviours come from good intentions.  The tendency to over react originated as a behaviour which was intended to protect you. Don’t beat yourself up about it; however recognise where the good intentions are not being fulfilled and where the behaviours need to change.
8. Develop some essential life skills:

• Learn to experience your feelings rather than suppress them. Observe where you experience them in your body and try to work out what you need. When we lose touch with our own feelings we lose our identity and rely on others to project an identity for us.  This identify rarely corresponds to our true self and is therefore a very uncomfortable fit.
• Learn to think beyond black and white thinking.  We don’t have to get stuck in “either/or” loops; most situations are made up of “shades of grey”.  Most of the meanings we apply to things can be reframed.  Remember there are always options and possibilities available to help us work through every situation and interpret every interaction.
• Understand the concept of “otherness”.  Establish strong personal boundaries for yourself and be clear about where you end and others begin.  You are not responsible for how others think or behave and their thoughts and behaviours are not a reflection upon you.  Learn to be separate from others.  You can love someone without fusing with them.   Don’t allow yourself to be misrepresented and don’t make assumptions about others.  Strong personal boundaries protect you from abusers. Healthy people will not be at all offended by your boundaries because they will have some of their own. Only toxic people will be threatened by them.
• Learn to express yourself assertively not aggressively. Use “I” statements to express your views. By expressing what you think, feel and need directly and honestly you will make life simpler for yourself and those around you.
• Listen to the views of others.  Be respectful, never self-absorbed; be empathetic and hear others’ words and meaning.  Listen actively.   In this way, we act with awareness and responsibility of our contribution to events, as well as empathising with the needs of others

Some deeply ingrained habits can be hard to break, and emotions that are buried deeply can be very hard to access and release.  As a Therapist I can help you with this.  Clinical Hypnotherapy, Psychotherapy and Counselling can help you re-discover the real you, and then go on to build a healthy fulfilling relationship with yourself.  That relationship with yourself is the foundation for your entire life.  It’s important to lay it carefully and make it as strong as it can possibly be.

Georgina is a Therapist at Hypfocus Therapies and Training at two locations in South East Melbourne at Conder Way Mentone and in the Bayside Therapy Group at 264 Charman Road, Cheltenham.   Call on 0435 923 817 to book a 30 minute free initial consultation.
 

© Hypfocus Therapies and Training August 2015